San Francisco continues to lead — by miles — any other Bay Area city in venture capital investments.
Nearly $2 billion of the $5.9 billion venture capitalists invested in California in the first quarter of 2015 went to San Francisco companies, according to a report on venture capital investing released this week by CB Insights. Put another way, San Francisco companies received more than one-third of the total investments into private companies statewide.
Compare that to Palo Alto, ranked second, which received just $420 million, according to venture capital tracker CB Insights. While San Francisco was home to 125 deals in the first quarter, Palo Alto saw nearly a fifth of that, or 27 deals. Menlo Park took third with 16 deals amounting to $305 million in investments, and VCs gave $268 million to firms in Mountain View.
San Francisco was also the top city in the country for investments in Internet companies, as investors poured $1.5 billion into Web start ups for a total of 69 funding deals. Second was New York, with $1 billion in investments spread across 54 deals.
And San Francisco led the nation with the most investments into mobile companies, which raised $338 million in 36 deals; New York again trailed with $97 million raised in 12 deals.
Venture capitalists pumped about 52 percent of the $11.3 billion invested nationally into California-based tech companies in the first quarter of the year, according to CB Insights, which tracks just pure venture investments — not including investments from hedge funds and institutional investors, which contribute heavily to private tech fundraising. While nearly half of all the country s venture deals in the first quarter took place in California, the state saw its third straight quarter in decreased deal activity, dropping to its lowest point since 2012, according to the report.
When investments from hedge funds, mutual funds and private equity investors into VC-backed companies are included, VC-backed companies across the U.S. actually raised $17.7 billion in 1,011 separate deals, marking a 13.5 percent increase in funding over the previous quarter.
